This invention relates to drinking cups and particularly to disposable drinking cup lids.
Many hot and cold drinks are served in disposable plastic cups. For carry-out customers, the cups have plastic lids to prevent spillage. Some of these lids have a tab which can be removed to provide a drink opening, or a straw insertion opening, to facilitate drinking the contents without removing the lid. This is especially useful when a beverage is taken to drink in a moving automobile. Conventional lids have several disadvantages, one of which is that, where there is a tear-out tab to provide a drink opening, the tab extends all the way out and includes the periphery of the lid. Removing the tab destroys the structural integrity of the lid, weakens the lid and cup assembly by removing the continuity of engagement between the peripheral section of the lid and rim of the cup, and disturbs the frictional seal between them making it highly susceptible to leakage.
Typically, where a straw insertion opening is provided, it comprises crossing through-slits in the lid body. This creates a pattern of adjacent pie-shaped sections with their apexes at a common center point. A drinking straw pressed through the opening sections displaces these sections enabling the straw to be inserted into the cup. One disadvantage of this typical construction is that it is difficult to insert the straw if the plastic material in the lid body is thick or stiff, or the crossed through-slits are short.